Tips for getting into YC

from a solo, female, ‘nontechnical’ founder

I applied to YC once and was accepted into the W20 batch with my egg freezing company, Lilia.

Admittedly, I don’t know the secrets behind YC’s acceptance decisions. But I can share what I did, and my guess at why they accepted me.

1. Study & obey what YC says about how to get in. I followed this almost exactly and referred to it often while writing my application.
2. Have a strong opinion about the future. I had clear conviction on the future I saw: one where egg freezing was as common as birth control. How will the world be different because of what you build?
3. Make progress. I met who’d ultimately become my YC partner at one of the international campus tours they do. At that point, I had mostly an idea in production. By the time of my interview a couple months later I’d launched, had customer feedback, and an iddy bit of revenue. They want to see that you can execute quickly, and even better if it is based on customer feedback.
4. Be clear and concise. These folks are reading thousands of applications, so need to “get” what you do quickly. Keep it simple, colloquial, + free of jargon.
5. Show you deeply understand your customer and their problem. In my case, I’m solving my own problem. If you’re not, demonstrate how you know your customer’s pain.
6. Be committed to the problem regardless of YC. I was going to keep working on my company whether or not we got into YC, and said so in my application. Later, one of the partners said “Alyssa, what’s exciting about you is that solving this problem [egg freezing for all] seems like your life’s purpose.” Commitment offers some confidence that you’ll be much slower to quit when things feel impossible than someone who cares less.
7. Spend time on the application. Despite PG’s advice to spend only an hour or two on the application, I worked really hard on it. I printed out my drafts and edited them in red ink a few times. Get it reviewed by other founders, if you can.
8. Calculate market size bottoms-up. When they ask “How much money could you make” on the application, they are asking about potential market size. Here’s what bottoms-up looks like for Airbnb, as an example: if 100M people book travel accommodations every year, and Airbnb makes $20 per transaction, “how much money they could make” is $2B/year.
9. Show you can build the solution. Especially for folks who aren’t software engineers, YC needs to see that you’re not solely depending on an engineering contractor to build your product out.

Finally, don’t be deterred by the paltry acceptance rates. You have nothing to lose by submitting an application. I’m looking at you, my fellow female founders. YC changed the trajectory of my company, and so my life. I recommend it with gusto.